I have learned something about myself today: I shouldn’t be allowed near kitchen utensils. This is a problem because I am the cook of the house, and yet my time with the demo for 500 FINGER FILLET proves most unanimously that I am going to cut one, maybe more, of my fingers off. It feels like an inevitability, one I can’t escape from, because I did in fact cut off almost every single finger on my left hand in 500 FINGER FILLET, an incredibly stressful roguelite where you only need to click your left mouse button.

For those that missed the announcement of 500 FINGER FILLET, it is a game in the vein of Buckshot Roulette, where on this occasion you’re playing that classic tabletop game the knife game. You know, the one you see pirates play in movies where they increasingly speedily stab the gaps between their splayed out hands, looking someone else in the eye as they do so to prove how fearless they are. It is also a roguelite, one where each round sees you choosing between a fine selection of dining accoutrement.

This comes in the form of, predominantly, all sorts of knives, each with their own stats that determine how likely they are to sever a finger, cause you blood loss, and inflict pain upon you, all of which are important to keep track of. Lose a finger, and you’ll keep losing blood. Lose enough blood, and you’ll blackout and fail to wake back up. If you reach your maximum pain threshold, you’ll blackout and lose a bit of time, because oh yes, you have a time limit of a handful of minutes in which you must stab the space between your fingers 50 times per round.

Halfway through a round, assuming you’ve made some money from either the abilities of your chosen blade or by stabbing golden bugs, you can buy items to assist you. These might be rings that go into effect upon stabbing or severing a finger, or if you’re lucky, you might even get some tape to help you reattach your beloved appendages.

The entire thing is a monumentally stressful experience because the machine with which you use to stab yourself is constantly shaking, never quite sure of where it wants to land. At one point I got a syringe and that went well for me because it was so thin. Another time I had a fork and stabbed myself essentially all 50 times. And then there was the blade cutter, the weapon of my fingers’ demise, which ultimately caused me to fail to see another day.

What surprised me was the greed that immediately took hold of me while playing 500 FINGER FILLET. In my hubris I truly believed that I could click away without a care in the world and get off scott free. “I’m smarter than some finger death trap,” I say to myself, immediately cutting off my favourite finger (I’ll let you guess which one that is). What hurt even more was doing this to my favourite hand (my left hand (I’m left handed)).

As a point about the hand in which you inflict all of this upon, a small detail that I liked is that at the beginning you can choose both your skin and nail polish colour. You can even choose the colour of your blood! A tiny little detail that will make the pain oh so sweeter. Would be nice if I could choose which hand I do the stabbing too, though. I really do like my left hand.

500 FINGER FILLET is due out sometime this year, has a demo available now, and can be wishlisted on Steam.